April 2011
How Wall Street Made The Mortgage Crisis Worse →
npr.org
The “sausage grinder” is probably the best and most understandable analogy for the financial crisis yet.
Play
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Steve Carell leaving The Office: He made it bleaker, funnier, and more sadly American. →
slate.com
It’s very interesting to see how The Office parallels America’s recent story arc. Problems of the whole can’t be fixed because of incompetence seeping through each layer of management. The good held back by the bad.
“To this day, the American people have not seen a cervical mucus plug, let alone one that has been signed and notarized by a state-certified Hawaiian health official. If the president was indeed born in the manner in which he claims, then where is his gestation sac?”
—Fake Alan Keyes quote.
Afterbirthers Demand to See Obama's Placenta →
t.co
Headline of the century.
“
In the Bible, in between the part where Reuben kills a he-goat so he can dip some clothes in the blood of the he-goat and where Judah tries to give Tamar a goat but decides maybe she should be burned to death instead, God kills a man named Onan because Onan intentionally spills his seed on the ground.
(1) Thou shalt not whack off. (2) Mo goats mo problems.
Life lessons! From the Iron Age!
” —OkTrends
“Frequent tweeters have shorter real-life relationships than everyone else, probably via some bit.ly hack. Unfortunately, we have no way to tell who’s dumping who here; whether the twitterati are more annoying or just more flighty than everyone else.”
—OkTrends
“
Vegetarian-Friendly Sex Slang
Peeling the banana.
Tossing the salad.
Squeezing the melons.
Zeroing in on a grown man’s nuts and nutsack.
Putting Monsanto in yoursanto.
Ordering the split pea soup.
Sorry, that’s got ham.
Cornholing others.
” —OkTrends
Jan Brewer: Birther Issue is Destructive →
huffingtonpost.com
Uhh, who are you and what have you done with Jan Brewer?
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“
The great oak tree had stood on a hill over the Hudson, in a lonely spot of the Taggart estate. Eddie Willers, aged seven, liked to come and look at that tree. It had stood there for hundreds of years, and he thought it would always stand there. Its roots clutched the hill like a fist with fingers sunk into the soil, and he thought that if a giant were to seize it by the top, he would not be able to uproot it, but would swing the hill and the whole of the earth with it, like a ball at the end of a string. He felt safe in the oak tree’s presence; it was a thing that nothing could change or threaten; it was his greatest symbol of strength.
One night, lightning struck the oak tree. Eddie saw it the next morning. It lay broken in half, and he looked into its trunk as into the mouth of a black tunnel. The trunk was only an empty shell; its heart had rotted away long ago; there was nothing inside – just a thing gray dust that was being dispersed by the whim of the faintest wind. The living power had gone, and the shape it left had not be able to stand without it.
[…]
It was an immense betrayal – the more terrible because he could not grasp what it was that had been betrayed. It was not himself, he knew, nor his trust; it was something else. He stood there for a while, making no sound, then he walked back to the house. He never spoke about it to anyone, then or since.
” —Ayn Rand, The Fountainhead
6 Year Old Brings Loaded Gun to School →
huffingtonpost.com
“No teen should feel compelled to buy or carry a gun to protect himself on the way to getting an education.”
Nor should a college student, for that matter. And Arizona voted to allow guns on campuses? Glad the Governor vetoed that crap.
Politifact on More GOP Lies About Planned Parenthood →
politifact.com
Do these politicians actually know they are lying or are they just too stupid to check what the data they have means?
The interesting thing in this story is that organizations like Politifact do a little light digging and are able to quickly realize that these two were arguing about two completely different figures.
Maybe if they stopped yelling their opinions at each other they’d realize that.
But I still wonder if the ones doing the gross misrepresentation of facts are doing that intentionally or out of stupidity. As a U.S. senator once said, “You don’t have to pass an IQ test be in the Senate.”
GOP Town Halls Getting Fiesty →
huffingtonpost.com
Republicans are getting railed by their constituents over the Ryan plan.
And apparently the “post-Gabby Giffords era” is a thing now (upped security at public meetings).
I have a download frozen at 99.94%
Androids Track Your Location Too →
guardian.co.uk
So there.
All the “fandroids” that got on Apple’s case when the earlier story broke are like Knicks fans getting excited when their team takes a late lead over the Celtics. Premature celebration.
No I’m not an Apple fanboy, but I saw some misleading headlines about the whole iPhone tracking issue along the lines of “Apple is tracking you” or “Apple knows where you are” that irked me.
The truth is Apple doesn’t know where you’ve been, your iPhone (and your computer) does. This word choice can lead casual readers and headlines browsers to misunderstand the situation. This is how conspiracies are fed.
Is the fact that the iPhone dumps a file onto your computer recording your every move a little unsettling? Yes. Should you be afraid of that? Not necessarily.
The data is not being secretly beamed back to Cupertino and used to control the “collective” or secretly glean trends about iPhone users. The data is contained entirely on the iPhone and on your computer, so the only way this kind of data is going to “fall into the wrong hands” is if you lose your phone or computer.
And trust me, you’ve got far more sensitive data of a much higher value to evil-doers on your phone and computer than a massive database of longitude and latitudes. Maybe I’m just a technology apologist, but what evil as ever really come of these “scares.”
So that’s why headlines about “Apple” tracking you and “Why You Should Be Scared Shitless About the iPhone Tracker Fiasco” (I’m paraphrasing) are irresponsible.
And I’m just as surprised that Android devices track location as I am that iPhones do - which is to say, not at all.
Kyl Has Planned Parenthood Remarks Stricken from Congressional Record →
huffingtonpost.com
Sure you can clean up your atrocity from the official Congressional Record, but the problem is things can’t be un-said. The people who believe the things you say only have their beliefs fed by these things, no matter what you do to retract them. They have selective hearing, which the reason they (and you) come to conclusions like this in the first place. Damage done.
Katya Doesn't Have VD
- Malory Archer: And YOU! Go see Kreiger this instant!
- Sterling Archer: I don't need a doctor, mother, Katya doesn't have VD!
- Malory: You haven't had sex with her?
- Sterling: Ha ha... for your... heh, that was pretty good.
